Huh? ( )

Spectacular book. Great insight into characters and time, a time I know well. ( )

Fucking family. Feeble and forlorn and floundering and foolish and frustrating and functional and sad, sad. Fucking family. Fiend or foe.

Likely Ang Lee's film remains superior. The struggle is apparent here. One trying to rationalize one's upbringing is always a fool's errand. Moody appears to halt before the warmth. He's perhaps too keen to be clinical. ( )

The branching and twisting narrative felt familiar - but that's probably because this novel has influenced so many great modern writers. Parts are very funny, but I 'm afraid I see it more as a building block towards better books. ( )

During the long Thanksgiving weekend in 1973, the commuter village of New Canaan, Connecticut, is the focal point for a transformative series of events that bring sexual satisfaction and frustration, emotional distress and elation, marital collapse, a heck of a big ice storm, and death. Apparently told from the various points of view of the four members of the Hood family (though in fact the real narrative voice is singular and backward looking from a distance of twenty years), the novel concentrates on what must have been foremost in all of their lives in 1973: sex. Benjamin Hood is involved in a desultory way in an extra-marital affair; his wife, Elaine, longs for something more in her marriage and in her life; their daughter, Wendy, is learning about sex with two brothers in the house next door; and Paul, who is away at prep school, is making his own plans for sexual conquest. The family is about to come apart, and from the looks of the television news with Watergate and Vietnam, it looks as though the country will too.

Rick Moody catches the Hood family at the cusp. Nothing will be the same after this weekend. But will anything really change? It may be a moot point. Certainly the writing here is enough to fascinate. The period detail will enthral those readers old enough to be able to experience real nostalgia of this time period in America. And the speculations of the wider significance of ‘family’ in life and in comics will propel some readers into further thoughts on the meaning or meaninglessness of marital vows, sexual dalliance, and alcohol abuse.

This is not a novel with all the answers. And it even doubts some of its own questions. But it is a novel with a lot to offer and needs to be read if only to remind us when Rick Moody found his form. Recommended. ( )